By Todd Lavoie
Well, I can't speak for all of us here, but I reckon I'm not the only one who likes to unwind after a hard day's work with a rip through Slayer's Reign In Blood, a couple of beers, and a box of crayons…am I? I best not neglect the trusty ol' number two pencil while I'm at it, either - all the better for scrawling perfect 666's upon every available surface as "Postmortem" heralds the sheer blinding breadth of my fiendish ways, my pure evil intent. Are you with me, my pentagram-slamming brothers and sisters? Someone please tell me I ain't alone on this one.
Of course I'm not alone, silly, silly headbangers! Exhibit A: The Heavy Metal Fun Time Activity Book (2007), recently unleashed upon the previously untapped Crayola-wielding caught-in-a-mosh market by ECW Press/Independent Publishers Group. Authored and drawn by Aye Jay Morano - credited here as simply "Aye Jay" - the 48-page children's activity book send-up pays loving tribute to those fantastic little workbooks Mom and Dad would buy us at the supermarket or the toy store to shut us up for a few hours in the car during long drives.
Yep, I remember a bout or two of gut-wobbling carsickness on trips up to summer cabins and amusement parks, thanks to burying myself nose-deep in those suckers, throwing myself into diamond-cutting concentration trances in an effort to keep coloring with the lines! Oh, how I loved those books - excitement awaiting on every page, with dot-to-dots, mazes, word searches, brain teasers, and oodles of pictures ready for the colorin'! Any chance to bust out the burnt sienna and my stubby little fingers would set a-twitching in anticipation.
And yes, yes, yes, start pumping those fists like you mean it, Rock 'n' Roll Children (to borrow a phrase from the ever-wise devil's horn originator, Ronnie James Dio), for I bring good news! Morano has rounded up all of these kiddie faves and dressed 'em in black leather and tattered jeans - just the way they were always meant to be, really.
Coup Number Two: he even snagged Mister "Party Hard" himself, Andrew WK, for the foreword! (Even better: he had the brilliance to entitle it "Joy and Celebration: a Foreword.") And since any self-respecting metalhead knows that metal comes in threes - last time I checked, the Number of the Beast was still 666, and definitely not 66 - how's this for the triple-crown: Morano also enlisted Dio to share some sage-like advice on the back cover of the book. ("Use some magic and the answers are sure to come," he suggests. Or, put another way: refer to his 1983 classic banger and simply look for your "Rainbow in the Dark" for guidance.)
Odds are, you'll probably head first to the coloring pages - not that I could blame you, really, since that is exactly what I did when I pulled the sucker out of my backpack and sprawled out on the living room floor with a fat new box of crayons, Jesu blasting away overhead. (FYI: the slowly-enfolding ruminations of Justin Broadrick make quite a match for the pensive acts of choosing color schemes, coloring within and without the lines, etc., etc. The rumble-creepin's of Earth work pretty well, too.) Filling in the spike-festooned forms of Gwar was a particular joy, and a great catalyst for internal-dialogue: shall I use the cornflower or cadet blue? Magenta or mahogany? What would Beefcake the Mighty prefer? Pantera, Sabbath, Glenn Danzig, and a Metallica-through-the-ages coloring session are also on offer, so the color-combinations are endless. (Though I imagine old reliable black and red will still be the most reached for, at the end of the day.)
Test your pencil skills by finishing off the half-drawn Mortiis illustration (before he finishes you off first, har, har, har), and by using the provided Gene Simmons face-paint pattern to complete your own self-portrait-as-KISS-member. There's sudoku - the sixes are already supplied, of course. Mazes galore, too - my fave was leading Ozzy through the twists and turns in order to bring him on home to Ozzfest (poor guy - needs all the help he can get, doesn't he?) There are dot-to-dots - the results hardly sneak up on you (well, they might on Ozzy, actually), but how often does one get to connect dots to create flying-v guitars ? Or, hell, the Melvins' Buzz Osborne's hair, for that matter?
Top prize, though, goes to the "Holy Diver" Mad-Libs, in which you and a co-conspirator of your choice can, um, re-write the Dio stomper by cobbling together the wackiest, zaniest, and quite-possibly-scatological nouns, verbs, and adjectives, just like you did with your friends in the back of fourth-grade class (before the teacher confiscated 'em, anyway). Put on your thinking caps, brainstorm away, and watch hilarity fly as you read back your masterful rewrite of Ronnie James' signature anthem.
Just to reiterate, then: The Heavy Metal Fun Time Activity Book. It's heavy metal. It's fun time. It's activities. And yes, it's a book, too.
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